Google To Fund Ideas That Will Change the World

Peace Corps Online writes "This week, as part of their tenth birthday celebration, Google announced the launch of project ten to the 100th, a project designed to inspire and fund the development of ideas that will help to change the world. They have called on members of the public to share their ideas for solutions that will help as many people as possible in the global community, offering a $10 million prize pool to back the development of those chosen as winners. 'We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition,' says Bethany Poole, Project Marketing Manager for Google. 'These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple — but they need to have impact.' The project's website asks entrants to classify their ideas into one of eight categories listed as Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter and Everything Else. Members of the public have until October 20th to submit their ideas by completing a simple form and answering a few short questions about their idea."

First Idea

a gun that shoots cookies. either at 600f/s or just gently enough to hit my mouth.

Re:First Idea

a gun that shoots cookies. either at 600f/s or just gently enough to hit my mouth.

Noo! that would be the ultimate weapon. Armies would drop their weapons to be shot! Children would run into war and battlefields thereby preventing the armies who refuse to give up their arms to stop shooting to not hit the children.

No sir! Your idea is extremely dangerous and anti-American! Why peace would break out along with our waistlines!

What next? C-130 tankers with milk?!? And then what?!? It'll escalate. You'd have others inventing pizza guns and then tankers with beer! There would be no end and our planet would degrade into obese partying!

Someone call the cops on the parent degenerate.

Re:First Idea

Someone call the cops on the parent degenerate.

I tried that once, but apparently being grounded does not legally count as false imprisonment.

I'll get you one day, Parent Degenerate! Shakes fist at basement ceiling.

Who profits?

So who actually profits from this? Does Google sift the data and then start up in-house projects or do they run a program like the MacArthur genius grant, where the money is provided with little to no strings attached?

Given the earlier controversy over their EULAs containing clauses to forfeit all rights to your IP, this isn't just an idle question.

Re:Who profits?

Why not read the TOS before spouting stupid questions...

Terms of service

Google created this call for submissions to engage Google users and the global community in a discussion about how to change the world. Participants are invited to submit proposals about how best to improve our world in a variety of key areas. Users are asked to vote on their favorite proposal. The most popular ideas will be put before a panel of experts to be considered for implementation by Google.

By participating, you agree to be bound by the Google Terms of Service (http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS [google.com]) and the Google Privacy Policy (http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html [google.com]), both documents herein incorporated by reference, as well as the following additional terms (altogether "Terms"). If you choose to include a video, you also agree to be bound by YouTube's Terms of Use (http://www.youtube.com/t/terms [youtube.com]).

1. Participation: Google will post instructions, restrictions and guidelines for this call for submissions on the Project 10100 website. You agree to adhere to these materials. Google reserves the right to reject your proposal or terminate your participation should you not adhere to these materials or the Terms. Google will email you if your idea is chosen as a finalist.

2. Intellectual property rights: You warrant and represent that any content you submit is your original creation and does not infringe any third party rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, and publicity, and that the content is not otherwise illegal or made or submitted in violation of any contractual obligation you might have with a third party.

As between you and Google, you retain ownership of any intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) you have in and to your submission.

As a condition of participation, you grant Google, its subsidiaries, agents and partner companies, a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display your submission and the proposal provided therein (1) for the purposes of allowing Google, the advisory panel and users to evaluate your idea for purposes of the call for submissions, (2) in connection with advertising and promotion via communication to the public or other groups, including, but not limited to, the right to make screenshots, animations and video clips available for promotional purposes and (3) for the purposes of putting your submitted proposal into effect.

You agree that Google has final authority regarding this call for submission and the selection of the ideas to be considered for implementation. You acknowledge that your submission might be similar to ideas submitted by other participants and/or proposals independently developed by Google, and that Google does not need to recognize your submission should your idea not be the source of the proposal or proposals ultimately implemented. You further acknowledge that even if your proposal is selected by Google, Google is not compelled to implement your proposal in its entirety, or at all. Google reserves the right in its sole discretion to incorporate your proposal or any other ideas into the project or projects finally selected for implementation

3. Privacy: You agree that personal data you disclose as part of this call for submissions, including name, phone number, and email address, may be processed, stored, shared and otherwise used for the purposes and within the context of the call

Re:

I'll admit, I didn't click through the three links needed to find the ToS. Of course, it still gives very little information as to how the funding is distributed. The guarantee of IP rights is nice, if they honor it. Problem is, it's really hard to prove the origin of an idea. I can see this being a legal headache for Google, since any new work they do that happens to overlap a submitted idea will probably lead to litigation.

Re:

Given the earlier controversy over their EULAs containing clauses to forfeit all rights to your IP, this isn't just an idle question.

You mean the ones they immediately fixed? Are you one of those paranoid whiners who has no problem with Microsoft but points out all the evil things that Google must be doing?

Re:

Replying to self, this is bad but I also just found this http://www.project10tothe100.com/faq.html [project10tothe100.com]...

"Q: What do I get if my idea is chosen? A: You get good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people."

Doesn't sound like profit is the name of the game here.

Wrong name?

The prize pool is only ten to the 6th.

You missed the point

Google isn't asking for profitable ideas or anything like that.

Sure, some of them could end up being profitable, but that's not the point. They want to invest in nice ideas which could improve the life quality of people. From the video, you can clearly see they're interested in ideas that could, for instance, ease the burden put on poor people in countries like Africa. You can hardly profit from that.

This is called philanthropy. And it's amazing how people from the US find this so absurd.
Sometimes, there really isn't a catch.

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ideas that could, for instance, ease the burden put on poor people in countries like Africa.

Or improve the quality of education in countries like the US...

Education

Use Google's infrastructure and clout to combat censorship and surveillance of dissidents by oppressive regimes.

just throwing this out there...

Here's a great idea that would change the world...

Search.

You know, that works really, really well.

I know, it's a crazy idea and I bet no-one at Google has thought of it.

I posted four... but I do this for a living ;-)

May those who help most win so they say.

I made three entries - the hexayurt, the infrastructure package, and the low cost medical care.

The Hexayurt
The hexayurt is a reasonably well tested next generation disaster relief shelter built on free/open source principles and industrial supply chains. It comes from work done at the Rocky Mountain Institute. The basic idea is to take 12 standard 4âx8â industrial panels, cut six in half diagonally and fasten them into a cone (see the site for pictures) and use six whole panels for the walls, giving a durable shelter of 166 square feet, big enough for 5 people at UN standards. These shelters will survive 80 mph winds easily.

The emphasis on using standard industrial materials is the key. Nobody can afford to carry extensive stocks of emergency housing for disasters in the developing world, which often displace millions of people. Airfreighting tents is expensive and inefficient, and tents are lousy shelter for long term use, which is all-too-frequently how they are deployed. The Hexayurt idea is that industrial cities near regular disaster zones (Bangaladesh, strife-torn areas of Africa, the hurricane belt) take their existing industrial infrastructure and add a few simple new skills so that before or after a disaster they can mass produce a simple, long-life shelter for affected populations. This is a step towards disaster relief self-sufficiency at a regional level, so that these areas begin to be able to cope without being so reliant on patchy and poorly-funded international relief effots.

The Hexayurt concept has been tested by US DOD, and is an integral part of the STAR-TIDES program. American Red Cross and Netherlands Red Cross both think it is a great idea and have supported its development, and AMURT is considering the system. All of this has been done by a persistent self-funded open source development effort.

http://hexayurt.com/ [hexayurt.com]

The Hexayurt Infrastructure Package
The hexayurt is a free/open disaster relief shelter which has its own entry. However, a shelter alone is not enough to really help people after a disaster. If you have 100,000 perfectly good shelters in a field, the next problem you face is water and sanitation: without some deployed solution, people will get sick and die.

There are lots of appropriate technology solutions to sanitation, cooking without wasting wood or generating toxic smoke, purifying water to drink. All of them are under-funded, under-tested, and under-adopted. Millions to tens of millions die every year because this âoeappropriate technology infrastructureâ is not being properly funded, and the result is needless loss of life.

The key is to understand that credible candidate technologies exist to provide all the same basic essential services that people enjoy in the developed world on a budget of maybe $200. Furthermore, the services can be provided house-by-house. For example, rainwater is collected on your roof, then purified using a biosand filter to give you safe drinking water, rather than having a water purification factory down the road and pipes. These systems are basic, and some need work, but some combination of SODIS, solar water pasteurization, thermophilic composting toilets, sulabh toilets, solar cookers, rocket stoves, gasification stoves, biosand filters, microsolar, microwind and microhydro will provide all the basic essential services of life in nearly any climate anywhere in the world. What hasnâ(TM)t been done is a global systematic program of testing each of these individual technologies in each region of the world, making local adaptations, cleaning up and publishing the designs, making training videos, running educational courses, and looking for chances to integrated, combine and synthesize systems into whole packages which are proven to provide all essential services in the field. This is our proposal.

Reminds me of Microsoft's Imagine Cup

This reminds me of Microsoft's Competition:

http://www.microsoft.com/nz/imaginecup09/about.aspx [microsoft.com]

In 2009, the Imagine Cup challenges the world's most talented students to "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today."

I find the goal a bit too broad for a challenging competition, there are also a few requirements, some of which I find a bit odd:

• Use of a Mobile device
• Implementation or consumption of a XML Web Service
• .NET Framework 2.0 or later;
• Visual Studio family (Express, Standard, Professional, or Team System) for development

Re:

That's a hell of a lot of extra work to globally disseminate your idea to the world.

You wouldn't let Google have the hassle of doing the footwork if they flipped you a few mil? I think maybe you lack some of the foresight/vision/humanitarianism that the contest seeks to capitalize on.

Just sayin....

Re:

Some projects require resources no matter how you look at it: e.g. labs, connections with other intelligent people, test subjects, etc. Unless you are rich or have a project that requires minimal resources, you may have a hard time doing all of the research and commercializing all of the work on your own. Now if you can do such a thing, kudos to you; but, these grants (and that is what they are) are probably meant for grand projects that bring together specialists across many different fields. What I'm curi

Re:ok

I think the goal here is to give some funding to profit-losing ideas that help people. It's not hard to get profit-making ideas funded.

Re:

I think it's hardest to make something that truly makes peoples lives better and not not make a profit. Maybe I'm just too practical though...

Re:

Assuming the "not not" was a typo:

I think you're only thinking of things that have near-term benefits. This would probably exclude reducing your environmental impact, not having kids to benefit mankind etc. And don't laugh, the reason I chose not to have kids is because I decided that this would probably be the best thing anybody but a genius could do for mankind. I wanted 3 or 4 kids when I was 19 and then read a report about projected global population growth and the terrible environmental impact it wo

Re:

1: Some renewable energy source that actually can handle dense loads 24/7. Solar can't. Nuclear really can't because contractors are too inept or corrupt to do a job right. Pretty much, fusion is the only thing we got going.

Dude, if you have fusion going, then wtf are you doing applying to google for some share of a 10MM grant?! You could have billions in VC funding.

5: Tape backup that has a modern arial density, and that is inexpensive. Hard disks are fickle and fragile, and tape isn't perfect, but can st

Re:5 simple things

Nuclear really can't because contractors are too inept or corrupt to do a job right.

So, let's see, that means that you're simply going to dismiss the technology because you assert that the people doing the work aren't capable of doing it correctly. Do you have any proof, or are you just expressing your own anti-nuclear bias. Oh, and before I forget, fusion is a form of nuclear energy as well.

Re:My idea...

How ironic, here was my entry

10. What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

Beer Sandwiches.

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11. Describe your idea in more depth. (maximum 300 words)

Ever since that first man drunk a fly infested bucket of rancid water and fermenting honey, alcohol has been a mainstay of society. If we were able to fuse the brilliance of beer with the genius of the sandwich, the possibilities would be endless!

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12. What problem or issue does your idea address? (maximum 150 words)

Beer is an aqueous solution which is prone to spilling. A "sippy cup" would address the problem, but will leave the user humiliated. A beer sandwich is the most logical solution

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13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (maximum 150 words)

Most importantly, people who drink and drive. You see, a beer sandwich is a food, and there are no laws against "eating and driving". It would take stress off of the courts and put less innocent people behind bars.

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14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (maximum 150 words)

Someone needs to cross beer and sandwiches. Is it really that hard? You're freaking google!

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15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? (maximum 150 words)

Everyone around the world gets to enjoy beer sandwiches!

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"relinquish control of their intellectual property"
It's assholes like you that prevent the world moving forward. Everything has its price in your world, even blood. Just maybe there are people out there who want better things for less fortunate people - no payment needed thanks !

Re:my idea

Didn't you know? Only the smart people read the warnings.

So removing the warnings would only kill smart people; stupid people already kill themselves.

If you really want that effect, you should remove legislation such as helmet and seatbeat laws.